Comments by "LancesArmorStriking" (@LancesArmorStriking) on "HasanAbi"
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@Zb_Calisthenic
True, but the vast majority aren't prosperous, not anymore. I have experience in 2 continents, and most Americans are only better in material things. There is a wide variety of things here, the best technology, big economy.
But they struggle to give all citizens the basic things. Even in some russian villages, there is a clinic that will heal a broken leg for free. It will not be perfect, but to my understanding, it is the same in the us. The good services cost money, so most us citizens will only get average care, for a high price.
And most europeans will say that the pace of life is too fast in the us. You are making so much money, but no time to enjoy any of that. It is like having a bigger house, but no keys to inside.
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@TheSubso
...You must be kidding.
Russia didn't have the string of luck associated with free capital and knowledge transfer from the British Empire, isolationism for 200 years, access to 2 oceans with no foreign powers etc...
But I would say, even if you consider the russification and suppression of political dissent (is that any different to the US? South Korea was a dictatorship for decades), the average Ukrainian's life is- materially- vastly better now than it was 200 years ago.
The USSR, like it or not, industrialized Russia and its former subjects at breakneck speed, and much of the infrastructure they are defending right now wouldn't have even existed if not for Lenin.
You take for granted that the US started from a high level of development to start with.
Even immigration: hundreds of thousands of Germans were simply... allowed to leave for the US, but when they were invited to settle in Russia, Prussia quickly disallowed their movement. Europe went out of its way to hamper Russia at every turn, and continues to.
It will of course take time, and genuine investment and nurture (instead of neoliberal policy, allowing Russian oligarchs to launder money into Western banks) to develop Russia.
But I think that the stability that Ukraine would provide (namely the Carpathian mountains, shorter land border = lessened military expenditure) will free up some of Russia's budget to actually develop itself, and by extension Ukraine.
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@mjm3091
It isn't 100% Russian, but all (minus the 2 I mentioned) areas are majority ethnically Russian.
And you scenario isn't really likely.
There are indeed multiple factions-- but the pro-democratic ones will quickly be snuffed out, as they are mostly funded by Western NGOs and would lose organization in event of a civil war.
The oligarchs would likely elect just one of themselves to rule, and that person right now is Medvedev. Or Kadyrov-- in both cases, the conflict will continue, as both have expressed commitment to the issue and even taken it farther than Putin.
The Church-- now this one is laughable. It is a cultural institution with sway over older people's lives, but ruling Russia? With what army?
Let's move past that one, if you really insist then I'll explain to you why you can't rule a country with no way to have a monopoly on force.
Regarding Siberia becoming independent-- how?
If we assume that Siberia as a whole secedes, then sure-- but any region outside of Vladivostok will be landlocked and forced to negotiate with a neighbor that can access the world's oceans.
The problem is, Vladivostok is in no position to defend itself from the US Navy, which has been trying to establish any sort of foothold in the Okhotsk Sea for decades.
Any regions in between Vladivostok and the Russian core would face a similar problem-- foreign encroachment, Chinese or Western. All they have of value is minerals-- It is happening currently, but would accelerate if they all became smaller, weaker countries.
Lastly, much of Siberia is dependent on investment from the Russian core to survive, especially the more remote areas. The people can't just move to China-- they don't speak Mandarin! So they will need to keep ties VERY close to Moscow even in your fantasy scenario.
That is even assuming it happens, which it is VERY unlikely to.
You have a surface-level understanding of Russia, which is fine, but don't go around acting like a policy expert. Or like someone who actually lives there.
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@stormyprawn
I'm glad you agree, everyone seems to just deflect and call me a bot when I am clearly not. Would a bot have perfect English (or is that another sinister Russian plot?:)
I agree that violating sovereignty and warcrimes is a horrible thing to do, but I ultimately see the world in terms of likely outcomes.
We have already had decades of US hegemony, and they have abused that privilege greatly. They cannot be trusted to do the right thing of their own accord.
Essentially, we cannot condemn one and not the other--- partially because it's morally wrong, but also because it reinforces negative behavior.
If the US has genuine competitors- China, Russia, maybe someday India- it will need to treat countries better, or risk having them "fall" to other countries' influence.
Currently, Europe refusing to hold the US accountable for its crimes reinforces its bad behavior-- what incentive does it have to stop?
Additionally, Russia refusing to stop and pointing out the hypocrisy- however brual they themselves may be- is holding the US' reputation as a bargaining chip.
"If you claim to be against X, you need to apply it to everyone, your won government too".
If Europe and the US cannot do that, then Russia will simply keep reaping the benefits of the same actions the West does. And they cannot credibly tell Russia to stop without drawing attention to their own actions-- unless they stop, or retroactively pay for them.
So I don't personally see it as whataboutism, more like "ensuring impartiality".
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@stormyprawn
I certainly could say that, and I think there's plenty of evidence to support that.
I agree with your assessment here, and I have thought about this too: The only 2 "final" options for power politics are: hegemony, or not hegemony.
In other words, a single country controlling things, or a balance of power, as you said.
I would argue that we already did rather well, all things considered, with a balance of power in the nuclear age. Case in point: the Cold War. The mere fact that we're here is testament to the fact that it can be managed.
I also agree with you about the concept of interconnectedness, but your view of history here seems to be in a vacuum.
The "world order" was never truly reset, nor was it rebuilt from scratch. Europe still retained much of the international connection, industrial know-how, experience in statecraft, etc, that defined its own global domination in the 500 years prior.
America had also developed its own and left WWII unscathed.
So the idea that the economies of "the world" become so interconnected as to disincentivise war is missing the whole picture.
The rest of the world-- the newly freed European colonies, non-aligned countries-- had no such history of development and funneling resources and human capital into their own states for their benefit.
The "interconnection", in their case, just means Western global domination. Colonialism by another name.
Western companies and societies have so much more experience and time to make mistakes, come back from them, without a peer competitor completely absorbing them.
My point here? Russia got a similar treatment in the 1990s.
The aim of "shock therapy" may have been to transition Russia into capitalism, but it was so poorly done that-- while it did rope Russia into the West's financial institutions and companies (the reverse effect is being felt now)-- it also ruined Russia's prospects of developing on its own.
I can go into more detail if you like, but generally speaking:
mass privatization (eliminating a gov't budget),
opening up to Western companies, supporting Yeltsin and his "super-presidential" system (a weak democratic government to boot),
and rigging the 1996 elections to get him re-elected,
All made Russia unstable and weak, and very, very resentful of the West.
That decade essentially confirmed the Russian state's every fear about foreign occupation.
The centuries-old fight had been lost, and Russia was paying dearly- the economic impact was worse, comparatively speaking, than the Depression.
So while I think it's a nice sentiment to have, it will never be executed by the US. They would never intentionally help such a large country, a potential competitor.
China got lucky because Nixon worked with them to create an anti-Soviet alliance, and that let them slip through.
But otherwise? Unless the US can gain cheap labor or resources from a country, it will treat it as a threat.
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@thewarzoneformerlyknownass4498
This is why, in Russia, religion is allowed (both the Orthodox and the older, "Old Believer" sect, along with Islam, Buddhism, and animism)— but NOT evangelicalism.
It is an almost exclusively American religion and is a foothold for their influence in other areas of life within the targeted country.
This is similar to Japan's policy on Christians in the 1800's. Portugal, Spain, France, England, all used religion as a front to establish trade and colonies in Japan.
The Japanese did not make that mistake.
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@JollyWanker
Question, for someone who has WAY more knowledge on this than me. Should I even bother with learning on my own? From my own pov, I could be learning alot but in actuality it could be bullshit or no one's there to correct my cognitive biases.
Specifically, I want to learn to read through and accurately interpret scientific literature but I've heard that it's (ironically) more of an art than a science because so much context is needed to parse out the information coherently.
Ex: recognize manipulating p-values and correlation coefficients, know whether the organization that funded it has a bias, watch for scale altering in graphs, be able to get through the structure of a paper without falling asleep and/or getting confused, understand the minutia in wording like random sample vs simple random sample, know the hierarchy of information like meta-analysis being more reliable than survey, etc etc.
If there is a way to interpret it better, could you recommend anything? So much news always links back to a scientific paper and it's almost always exaggerated in the article, I want to get past that hopefully.
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